Spammers beware! This summer, Google is going after black-hat
and link spammers. Google’s Matt Cutts announced
9 things that Google will do within the next months. How do these
changes
affect the position of your web pages in Google’s search results and
what can you do to protect your rankings?

In the news: Bing has a market share of over 17%,
Google penalizes thousands of link sellers, a Google patent might have
information about the Panda update, and more.

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1. Official Google information: what to expect
from Google in the coming months

Spammers beware! This summer, Google is going after black-hat
and link spammers. In a video on YouTube, Google’s Matt Cutts announced
9 things that Google will do within the next months. How do these
changes
affect the position of your web pages in Google’s search results and
what can you do to protect your rankings?

1. There will be more Penguin
updates

Google is going to launch the next generation of the Penguin
algorithm within the next few weeks. The Penguin 2.0 update will go
deeper than the first Penguin version and it will affect a lot more
sites.

The Penguin update targets websites that use spam tools to
create backlinks. If you’re using tools that automatically create
backlinks to your site, stop using them now. If any tool that you use
contains the words “nuke”, “dominator” or “brute force” then it’s
likely that your website will be affected by the next Penguin update.

2. Google does not like
advertorials

Some websites use advertorials to get more backlinks. Matt
Cutts said that non-nofollow links from these advertorials violate
Google’s webmaster guidelines. If you purchase advertorials just to get
backlinks, this might have a negative influence on your Google rankings.

3. Google will take a closer
look at spammy queries

Some search queries such as ‘pay day loans’ tend to attract
more spam than other queries. Google’s search spam team will take a
closer look at these queries.

4. Link networks might get in
trouble

Matt Cutts said that Google is going to go “more upstream” to
make sure that some kind of links become less attractive. This probably
affects link networks. Google has penalized several link networks in
the past.

5. Google is going to analyze
backlinks better

Matt Cutts also said that Google is in the early stages of a
much more sophisticated link analysis software that will understand
backlinks much better. That probably means that the influence of forum
profile links might become even lower while the value of editorial
links increases.

6. Better handling of hacked
sites

Google is working on a better system to detect hacked sites.
The new system should be available later this year. Google also wants
to improve webmaster communication about hacked sites.

7. Authority websites will get a
ranking boost

Google plans to give websites that are an authority in their
category a ranking boost. For example, if your website is an authority
in the medical space, Google plans to show your website above websites
that are not as authoritative as your site.

8. The Panda update becomes less
strict

Matt Cutts said that many of the websites that were affected
by the Panda update were border cases. Google is looking at other
quality metrics that enables them to make sure that these websites
aren’t impacted by the Panda algorithm. The Panda algorithm targets
websites with low-quality content.

9. Less domain clusters

Matt Cutts said that the number of same domain clusters on
Google’s first result page should lessen this year. Google wants to
make the results on page one more diverse. The second result page might
contain more domain clusters.

What does this mean for your
website?

At the end of the video, Matt Cutts explains that Google wants
to reduce the number of webmasters who use black-hat spam techniques.
Smaller businesses that use white-hat SEO methods should rank better.

If you want to make sure that your website rankings are safe,
avoid spammy SEO methods at all costs. You can get short-term results
with black-hat SEO tools but your website will be penalized as soon as
Googles detects the spam.

SEOprofiler is a sophisticated SEO tool that uses only safe
white-hat SEO methods. SEOprofiler helps you to get your website on the
first result page. If you haven’t done it yet, create your SEOprofiler
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Google's Matt Cutts answered this question in a
video. He said that Google is going to launch an algorithm update
that limits the number of search results from a domain if the
same domain was displayed three or four times before in previous
results.

Once you have seen a cluster of results from a domain name, it will be
less likely that the subsequent pages show results from that domain.

"The patent provides more details on how human
ratings and signals from a website might be used to create a model for
quality rating that can help determine how pages are ranked in search
results, using a machine learning approach to generate ratings for
pages based upon the sample set of pages actually rated.

One thing I found really interesting was the patent’s description of
when pages might be re-rated, or reclassified. One possibility might be
that pages would be re-rated on a periodic basis. That seems to have
been what had been happening with Panda updates."

"Despite being located in Washington, Bing adoption
has been slower on the Google-dominated west coast. Bing also struggles
in the population-dense east coast in states like New York and New
Jersey.

North Dakota tops the list of states with the highest Bing market share
at 14.68%. Wyoming, Delaware, Iowa and New Mexico follow as the states
that have the highest Bing usage.

Not surprisingly, California has the lowest Bing market share with
5.28%. Both Yahoo and Google are located in California. Other states
with the lowest Bing usage include population centers like
Massachusetts, New York and District of Columbia."

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